


Mastermind Games

by Lempo Soi (Lemposoi)



Category: Green Hornet (2011)
Genre: Character of Color, F/M, M/M, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Wordcount: Over 1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemposoi/pseuds/Lempo%20Soi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lenore, Britt and Kato sort out their triangle by the poolside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mastermind Games

**Author's Note:**

> Contains: Manipulation, arguing, genre-savvyness.
> 
> Unbetaed, so C&C (including nitpicks) are welcome.
> 
> I really don't know where this came out from, I just bounced the characters off each other. Oh well. Could be a prequel to "History" or my up-coming long fic, but isn't necessarily.

"Okay, I have to know," Britt asked. "Why?"

"Why what?" Lenore smiled at him. She lay on a deckchair by his pool in a white bikini and a floppy sun hat, sipping something red from a tall glass full of ice cubes. She looked like nothing so much like an advertisement for all things California. Britt tried not to ogle, but he was only human.

The day was too hot to really be called 'nice'. There wasn't so much as a breeze coming in from the sea at this time of day, which was noonish on a June Saturday. The cool pool water was still running down his back, but he'd be dry again within a minute. Lenore seemed to be soaking it up.

"Well, for starters," he began, pulling up a deckchair next to Lenore's, "why did you apply for a temp job as a secretary when what you really wanted was to be a reporter?"

Lenore propped herself up on one hand and took a sip of her drink, considering him. In the slanting sunlight, she was all golden. "You really don't know anything about journalism, do you?"

"I think we've covered that."

"Nobody advertises for a reporter, Britt," Lenore explained. "Newspapers can pretty much just pick the most promising application off a pile of ones that people have sent in. There are never any openings. I had to find some other way in."

"You had a master plan?"

"I guess." She grinned. "Why do you think I wore that white dress? I'd read all about you in the papers. I knew you'd give me the job if I could, hm, arouse your interest, so to speak ."

"My 'interest', huh. You're saying a girl can't get a job unless she shakes some ass? That's pretty sexist, Lenore."

She snorted and put her drink down on an end table. "You think you'd have made me permanent if I'd shown up in a jump suit?"

"I might have!" Britt protested. "Not every guy only looks at a girl if she's hot."

"But would you? Britt Reid, bad boy and heir to a billion dollar business? I counted on you thinking with your pecker. It's worked so far."

"That's all the credit you give me?" She had a point. That was the annoying thing about Lenore – she always did.

"I give you more _now_." She held up her forefinger and thumb, half an inch apart. "At least a little."

"Chicks, man." Britt lay back on his deckchair, throwing his arm up to cover his eyes. The house's shadow had shifted, and the only thing between him and the sun was a tall palm tree. "Playing with my feelings like that. Not cool, Lenore."

She laughed. "Oh, your _feelings_."

Britt frowned at her through eyes squinted against the light. "You think I don't have any? I was really into you for a while there, you know."

"You were 'into' whatever Kato had."

He wasn't entirely sure he liked the way she smiled at him. He just couldn't decide if it was the look of a gently chiding mother or a cat with her favourite mouse. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"Okay, you do realize that that kitchenette is only about 15 feet away from my desk? I'm not stupid and I'm not blind. I spent weeks selecting your ties and typing up your notes and bringing you your coffee, and sure, you looked, but you never made a move until the day I made a date with Kato. And then cabinets got punched."

"Are you going to say Kato and I have a gay thing going on again? 'Cause I told you, I'm sexy, but I'm not that sexy." He gave her his most charming leer. She rolled her eyes.

"I'm _saying_ ," she emphasized this with an expansive sweep of her hand, "that you were jealous of Kato because he's stronger than you, smarter than you and better-looking than you, and now he was getting the 'chick' you had your eye on on top of all that. You didn't have 'feelings' for me, you just couldn't stand the idea that you weren't the centre of everyone's attention."

"All right, you don't have to rub it in." Britt sat up and turned to the glittering water, plucking at the bandage at his shoulder absent-mindedly. "Shit, Lenore, you're kind of scary sometimes, did you know that?"

"So I'm told." He heard Lenore sigh and the rattle of ice cubes in a glass. It was a wonder those things hadn't melted yet. "I made a mistake when I made that date. I didn't take it any further, but the damage was done and I lost my job. Some mastermind, huh?"

"You nearly broke us up for good, you know that?" he asked, glancing at her over his shoulder. "It wasn't just that, but that started it. Soon after that I'm taking a swing at him and he's shoving my face through the flatscreen."

"If that's what happened, it had nothing to do with me."

"Oh, didn't it?"

"It didn't and you know it, Britt Reid," she said sharply. "Come on. First you act like Kato's your BFF and then you shoulder in on his date? Tell him to make you a cup of coffee? I'm surprised you guys made up at all. How did you swing that, anyway?"

Britt shrugged, looking down at his toes wiggling pinkly between the straps of his flip-flops. "Apologized, that's all, " he confessed. It wasn't like he wasn't man enough to, right? "It wasn't just the coffee or, you know, shoving him in the pool and shit, I really treated him like - I don't know. I was an asshole. I don't know why he came back."

"Must be because you guys are totally gay for each other," Lenore said smugly and settled back on the chair.

Britt chuckled. "You think that's gonna hurt my feelings? I should be so lucky. It'd be like you dating, I dunno, Megan Fox. Nobody's gonna be anything but impressed." 

"You saying I couldn't date Megan Fox?" Lenore sounded amused.

Britt shot her a grin, delighted at the mental image, hello. "I'm saying... that's a challenge."

Lenore nudged the shades down on her nose and peered at him over them. "Accepted. You date Kato, I'll find a way to date Megan Fox."

"Guys, I'm right here," Kato said from under the patio umbrella by the breakfast table where he was compiling something mechanical and minute. "You do realize that?"

"Come on, buddy," Britt called out to him. "Lenore and Megan. Think about it. There is no downside. We'll go out to a club. I'll be the perfect gentleman."

Kato didn't even look up, but stayed bent over the sheet he'd spread over the table, his hands busy with the components. "I'm not dating you, Britt."

"What a shame," Lenore said, stretching, and Britt couldn't help it, he looked. The lady might not have much in the way of curves, but man, she could stretch. "I could've totally gone for Megan, but I can't now that it's a bet."

"Come on, K," Britt pleaded. "Us fake dating to get them to fake date is, like, the best idea I've had since that ejector seat. We could make it a double-date! We'd have to, just to make sure no-one cheats, right, Lenore?"

Now Kato did glance back at them, almost smiling. "It's a stupid idea. Haven't you ever seen a sitcom?"

"You mean that I'd end up hitting on Megan and you and Lenore would rediscover your attraction for each other and then I'd, I dunno, get arrested for possession and spend the night in a jail cell with some biker named Burt. No no, listen, you're thinking in the wrong genre." He was just getting warmed up. "You see, you and me and Lenore, we're action-adventure. There would probably be a terrorist attack in the restaurant and we'd all have to rush back for the costumes and someone would end up climbing a building carrying Megan while she's unconscious, and then when she came to she'd slap him - or her - and then they'd make out while the wind blows in their hair and something explodes in the background. I'm telling you, it would be totally sweet."

Lenore giggled. "What if we're a Judd Apatow film?"

"The same, with weed," Britt said seriously.

"No." Kato said with finality and turned back to his work.

"Seriously, you two. No sense of fun." Well, it had been a long shot. Britt kicked off his flip-flops. Sweat had already replaced the water down his back. "I'm going for another swim, and then it's back inside for some sweet airco. Kinda feel like seeing a movie now. Anybody for Batman Returns?"

Lenore waved a hand dismissively. Kato didn't even bother to turn around. Spoilsports.

*

Kato looked up surreptitiously from the mobile phone he'd just bugged and was putting back together. Lenore was sitting up on the deckchair, blonde hair falling over her thin back as she watched Britt climb on the diving board and bomb-dive into the water in a great big splash. She shrunk back when some droplets hit her legs, and reached for the sunscreen on the end table.

Kato watched her start lathering her legs. He was surprised not to find it sexy. It was all there: a beautiful woman, sunscreen, not a whole lot in the way of clothes - and yet he found his artist's eye more fascinated by the movement of her calf muscles under her skin than the modest swell of her breast.

After a moment, he clicked the last piece of the phone together, stood up, walked to her and sat down on Britt's vacated deckchair.

"Well, hello," Lenore said, peering at him over her shades.

He ended up blurting the whole thing out in one go. "So it's not that you didn't like me, just that you didn't want to lose your job."

She pursed her lips and gave him a calculating look. "I was going to give it a go, to see if I liked you. That's what dates are for. I just had to end it there because you guys had some kind of a stupid rivalry thing going." She shrugged. "It wasn't the romance of the century."

"So," he twiddled his thumbs, noticed he was doing it, and stopped and looked her in the eye instead. "Want to give it another go?"

Lenore's blue eyes flew open, and she sat up, leaning towards him, her hand touching his thigh. He felt a moment of undefined panic at the thought she might kiss him right then and there. "Sweetie," she said. "No."

"Oh," said Kato, swallowing sharp disappointment. Rejection never stung less than you thought it would.

"See, it wasn't just about my job," Lenore explained, her expression kind. That really didn't help. "The problems we had then haven't gone away. Actually, we've got whole new pile of problems on top of the old ones."

"You're the mastermind," Kato said, crossing his arms and sitting back. "I guess you'd know."

"We're supposed to work as a team, now," she continued. "It's not like Britt's going to stop being petty, and we are kind of basing this whole operation on his money and your skills--"

"And your brains."

"I wasn't going to say," she said modestly. She glanced at Britt doing careful strokes in the water with his bandaged shoulder, and lowered her voice. "My point is... well... I'm the boss. It's better not to say it to avoid stepping on any toes, but that's kind of what 'mastermind' means. You can't date your boss and expect teamwork not to suffer."

Kato nodded curtly. "I see."

"I'm glad you do."

Anger rose like bile in his throat. "We're back to tiptoeing around Britt just in case his feelings get hurt."

Lenore's eyes narrowed. "Okay. You don't see."

"I see just fine. You're been flirting with him all morning, all that stuff about Megan Fox, and now I'm suddenly 'sweetie'."

"You're kind of making my point for me, Kato."

"Then why are you doing it? What, are you going to take him out next and give him the cold shoulder just when everything looks like it's going right?"

"I'm not going to date either of you!" she snapped. "God! I was just teasing him. That's how Britt engages with women. It's not like--"

"You said you didn't play with Britt's feelings. What about mine?" Kato demanded.

"Oh, get over it!" Lenore shouted, standing up. "You've built it up into something it wasn't just because it hurt your pride. Go on, say the rest of it!"

"Right. Lenore knows everybody's mind!" Kato said, wanting to hurt her now. "Lenore's always in control! Lenore could have anyone she wants. There are prettier girls than you, you know. Younger."

"Four years older than you!" Lenore exploded. "What's next? You're going to complain about how nice guys like you never get the girl? You know what, Britt?" She twirled around to the pool, where Britt was clinging to the pool step, staring at them open-mouthed. "Forget about Megan Fox. As status dating goes, this guy's about on level with Courtney Love."

"Uh, I like Courtney," Britt said, frowning. "She's kinda great, actually."

"Well, then, I'm sure he's perfect for you." With that, she grabbed her towel and stomped off in the direction of the pool house.

"Wow, she is so sexist," Britt said, coming up out of the pool. "What was that all about?"

Kato stood up in a cloud of dark anger, crossed over to Britt in two strides and grabbed his neck, pulling him down for a kiss.

"Whoa, whoa," Britt said after a few seconds' shock, breaking off the kiss. "Are you seri—mmf."

Kato held his head still and kissed him the best he knew how, and he wasn't bad at it. His heart was pounding and he could feel Britt start to respond despite himself, his mouth falling open under Kato's.

"Look, look," Britt said after a moment, wrestling himself some breathing space. "Okay, I didn't catch all of that between you and Lenore, but even in action movies revenge-makeouts are generally not a good idea, and I'm pretty sure we're not an indie film, so - just stop, all right? Anyway, she was joking about you and me and - it was a joke!" That last syllable came out as something between a panicked squeak and a hysterical laugh.

"You're into it, though," Kato pointed out. He licked his lips and smiled to see the look on Britt's face. He wasn't entirely sure what he was doing, except he hadn't gotten laid in well over a year, Britt had been inexplicably turning him on since that day in the cemetery, and he wanted some more. Also, Lenore was a bitch.

Britt swallowed. "This is probably stupid," he muttered and grabbed Kato's head, kissing him hard.

*

Lenore leaned her forehead on the pool house's french window and sighed. She had her slacks on and the rest of her clothes lay ready on the couch. The ceiling fan blew blessedly cool air on her back.

"Finally," she whispered to the glass.

Those boys of hers went out and shot at things all night and then came home pumped full of adrenaline that had to go somewhere. It wasn't going to go into her and she didn't like the idea of letting them have girlfriends. Those two just weren't careful enough for that to be safe. The Green Hornet was an immensely stupid operation and it was Lenore's job to make it work and keep them safe for as long as she could, or as long as they all wanted the rush badly enough to risk it – and as long as the operation could still make a difference.

Isolate them from women, get them pumped up, twang on what was already there... It hadn't been easy, but thank goodness she'd had something to work with. What was the beginning of any entanglement other than potential, opportunity and momentary insanity? They had enough energy and sexual tension between them to get it going and keep it going, once they'd started. At least she hoped so.

She gathered her shirt and slipped it on over her bikini top. She'd make herself scarce for a while, at least to Kato, and play it by the ear from here on. She looked up a another splash from the pool. Britt and Kato had fallen in, still tangled in each other, Kato's T-shirt soaked and clinging to his back. She smiled at them. Oh, she was good.

She was still grinning when she slipped behind the wheel of her car. The only problem now was getting a hold of Megan Fox's phone number.

 


End file.
